Apparently, "[f]or many units serving in Iraq, digital cameras are
pervasive and yet another example of how technology has transformed
the way troops communicate with relatives back home. From Basra to
Baghdad, they e-mail pictures home. Some soldiers, including those in
the 372nd, even packed video cameras along with their rifles and
Kevlar helmets" (Christian Davenport, "New Prison Images Emerge,"
Washington Post, May 6, 2004). Soldiers of the occupation dissolve
into vacationing tourists. For many working-class Americans, whose
economic circumstances do not allow them to enjoy international
tourism, joining the US military may be indeed the only chance of
traveling and seeing the world outside the United States, however
relentlessly peace activists may try to debunk the perennial sales
pitch of military recruitment campaigns. Take, for instance, the
American Friends Service Committee's counter-recruitment brochure:
"Before you decide to enlist, check out other options that would help
you 'be all you can be.' Travel, education, money for school, job
training, and adventure can all be found in other ways. Your local
community may even have opportunities that you haven't considered"
("Ten Points to Consider Before You Sign a Military Enlistment
Agreement"). Doesn't the AFSC brochure lie to working-class youths as
much as military recruiters do? Only about 20% of Americans even own
a passport (the US Census Bureau says that the current US population
is 293,193,380, and the US Department of State's "Passport
Statistics" shows that about 59 million passports have been issued
over the last 10 years). In this regard, most natives of the United
States, a big rich country, have one thing in common with most
natives of Antigua, "a small place," whose postcolonial conflict with
foreign tourists Jamaica Kincaid imaginatively evokes in her book of
the same title. . . .
The rest of the posting is at
<http://montages.blogspot.com/2004_05_01_montages_archive.html#108397805775760801>.
--
Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/>
* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/>
* Calendars of Events in Columbus:
<http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>,
<http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/>
* Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/>
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/>
* Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio>
* Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>